Ardian’s investor base grows 25% as fundraising triples

Ardian gained 180 investors in 2018 as it more than tripled its fundraising activity from the previous year.

The Paris-headquartered firm had 880 investors on its books across all strategies, including primaries, secondaries and separately managed accounts, at the end of 2018, according to its Activity Report 2018. This is compared with 700 the previous year.

Ardian raised $28 billion last year, a 250 percent increase on the $8 billion collected in 2017. This is likely to have included some of the $9 billion it has collected for ASF VIII, which has an $18 billion target including co-investment capital, according to PEI data.

It confirmed mandates with projected future commitments of over $3 billion and reported increasing demand from Southern Europe, Latin America and Asia, in addition to its core markets of Germany, Switzerland and France.

Ardian distributed $12.7 billion to investors last year, up from $10 billion in 2017.

The firm deployed €1.2 billion in five European leveraged buyouts last year and $11.1 billion across 25 secondaries transactions, more than double the $6.4 billion of secondaries deals completed in 2017. The US fund of funds team completed $9 billion worth of deals in 2018, including five secondaries deals worth more than $1 billion each.